If it ain't broke ... but how do we know if it is or isn't? (sermon from Sun, Aug 25, 2019)

Reading:  Luke 13:10-21

Another story of Jesus teaching in a synagogue.  What a love / hate relationship he had with his religious heritage and culture.

Of particular interest in this reading are the parables tacked on as an end to the story.  In verse 18 (with the words, "he said therefore...") the Gospel writer makes a point of attaching the parables of the mustard plant and the yeast to the story of the bent-over woman in the synagogue, as Jesus' conclusion about the whole episode.

These two images or parables appear in a variety of contexts in the Gospels, and seem to have been among the favourites of the early church.  Of note is the fact that mustard, in spite of its medicinal properties, was a weak, scraggly plant that in most settings (and certainly in this one -- "in a garden") was seen and treated as a weed; and yeast, far from being the pre-packaged, measured, tested, predictable thing we have made it today, in Jesus' day was a wild, largely airborne thing that people tried to protect their food and flour from, to keep it from fermenting and spoiling.

Last day of Peach Festival!  What a delicious day!

For some it’s already over.  For those whose role was to peel and cook peaches, bake and box pies, prepare the booth, do the background organizing and gathering, and sell pies and panzerollis and jam and home baking Friday night and Saturday, the work is done! 

For others – who are selling this afternoon, taking the booth down and putting it away for another year, and doing the final accounting, the end of the work will be later today, or tomorrow, or in a few days’ time. 

And how wonderful it is when like the woman in the synagogue who is finally able to stand up straight and praise God, we are able to unwrap our fingers from around a sticky knife and wiggle them, unkink our back from bending over a table or the kettle or the peach booth counter-top, turn off the calculator and close the books, stretch out our legs and arms and finally lift our eyes from the work in front of us and be able to say, “Thank you, God!  Thank you, God, that we can do this!  And thank you, God, that it’s over!”  

Some time ago I visited a family to help plan a funeral for their father, and I heard of a job he once had taking care of high-end lawns and gardens.  One client out in the country had a long, winding, cobble-stoned driveway that needed to be cleared regularly of leaves that fell from overhanging trees.  The driveway was long, the leaves were a nuisance, the job had no end, and what the father learned and passed on to his family was that sometimes in life you just have to keep your head down and keep raking.  You don’t dare look up until it’s done.

Sometimes life is like that.  Jobs and commitments come our way that we have to take on, and that for a while just take over our life.  We suffer changes in life, times of financial hardship, or some other anxiety overtakes us that suddenly and severely limits what we can see and do and focus on, and narrows our attention to just dealing with this crisis step by little step until we can start to see our way clear.  It can be something harder as well – an illness or disability, a mental disorder, some terrible thing done that haunts us forever and narrows down the way both we and others around us see us and treat us for the rest of our lives.  And all we can do when this happens is to keep our head down and keep raking. 

The woman in the synagogue suffered 18 years from a spiritual and physical disability.  A spirit of some kind had taken over her life and she was bent over – unable to move easily among others, unable to see the world around her very well or very accurately, unable to look people in the eye and have a clean and clear conversation with them. 

And I wonder, through all those 18 years does she come regularly to the synagogue?  Maybe gets there just as things are starting so she can hobble into the back, not be noticed too much, not have to imagine all the funny, judgemental looks people probably give her?  Just keep your head down, she tells herself, and keep raking.

And what do the others feel and think about her?  Sympathy?  Charity?  Probably also a certain resignation to the conclusion (which is really a judgement) that this is her fate – to be different, bent over, welcome as long as she keeps in her place and doesn’t disrupt what the others are doing – doesn’t disturb what synagogue means for the “normal” ones, the ones whose lives are okay.

Until the day Jesus is there and he makes her and God’s love for her centre stage.  He is front and centre, teaching.  And when he sees her, he calls her forward to make her and her life the real teaching of the day for all who are there.

“Woman, you are set free from your ailment,” he says.  He touches her and immediately she stands up straight and begins to praise God. 

This doesn’t fit the game plan of the leaders of the synagogue.  They are happy with the way things have been and if it ain't broke, they think, why fix it.  For them synagogue is where people come to learn right from wrong, and where the line between the two – between those who are good and whole and God’s favoured ones and those who are not good and not whole and not God’s favoured ones, is clearly drawn and reinforced.  And the Sabbath – remember this all happens on the Sabbath, is a day to honour God by honouring the rules and the laws of God that create those distinctions, differences and divisions among us.

So they argue with Jesus.  They tell him what he’s doing is against all that’s holy and all that’s good for the synagogue.

To which Jesus replies, “You don’t get it, do you?”  With a roll of his eyes and frustration in his voice he says, “Let’s think about this.”  

The Sabbath, when it’s first commanded out in the wilderness at the foot of Mt Sinai on the way from Egypt to the Promised Land, is about two things, depending which version of the commandments you read – in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5.  In one, Sabbath is a day to stop idolizing our own work, as good as it may be, and to celebrate and rest in God instead as creator of all the world as good, and as sustainer of all that is, leading all things by God’s own power to a good and perfect end.  In the other, the point of Sabbath is to remember that God freed, and still frees us from whatever bondage and limitations keep us from living together as God’s beloved children in the world.

Which is why, he goes on to say, setting this woman free from her ailment and her marginalization in the community, and helping her share in the goodness of life with others is exactly what Sabbath – the day of God’s promise, is about, and what synagogue – the gathering of the faithful, is about.  And which is why, as he goes on to suggest in the two parables he follows with, that God’s kingdom comes through the random wild one who comes into our midst like an weedy, uninvited mustard seed, or comes into our ordered lives like an impure bit of wild yeast, and that it’s in our openness to them and our willingness to include rather than marginalize who and what they are, that something miraculously good starts to grow up among us that even we benefit from, and we begin to rise and grow together like never before into a people of God – bread for the world.

Like when we make changes to our heritage building to make it accessible to others, and in the process maybe rediscover what it means to be a church for the community.

Like when a community of faith like Welcome Inn creates circles of support and accountability for convicted pedophiles released to the community, to help them live there in the midst of others in ways that are safe and helpful for all.  In the process the people of Welcome Inn themselves learn things about being in community and being welcoming that they never knew or ever had reason to imagine before they dared to be that closely aligned with the unwanted.

Like when we reach out to people who feel cut off and isolated by grief, by a hard diagnosis, by disaster, or by scandal in their family.  In reaching out to be with them even when we can’t fix it and make it all better, we as much as they find ourselves experiencing God’s love and God’s power to heal in ways we never had reason to think about or know before.

Or when people come to join us who are different from us, with a different take on Christian faith, different gifts to develop than we have known, and different experience to share.  We might expect them just to fit in and bend themselves into the mold of what we already are.  Or we might make room for them to be who they are and share what they have, so we can all grow together towards an understanding and expression of God bigger than any of us know on our own.  Because God’s good news for the world is bigger than just the little patch of driveway we’ve been working on so well for so long.  So thank God for those who help us sometimes to lift our heads and stop just raking the same spot in the same way over and over again.

Which kind of raises a question.  

Who really is in bondage?  Who really needs to be, and is set free?  And how do we “do church” and find Sabbath rest in the fullness of God the way Jesus does?